Know thy strength

I got some madder root last night from my laurel to use for a A&S entry coming up at the end of the month, and since I really need to get moving on the project, I started prepping the root this morning.  For those of you not familiar with the madder root dyeing process, the roots come in pretty big pieces which you have to crush up into small bits, so as to expose maximum surface area to your dye liquid, and then soak the little bits for a day or two before you can start dyeing.  Chopping up the roots can be pretty tough business, you have to either grind them up in a food process or use a mortar or something similar.  Some of the larger bits can be really hard to deal with.

One of the larger, tough bits broke my small food processor (it was a P.O.C. anyway, so this is not surprising).  This is what happened after some vigorous smashing with my just-for-dyestuff mortar: